When the Evening Is Spread Out Against the Sky
by AMarguerite
Summary: In which Grindelwald is imprisoned and Albus must be forever Dumbledore. They contemplate morality and mortality, and, in the end, find out just what power love has after all. Final part to 'Insiduous Intents', but should make sense on its own.
1. The Wind Blows the Water White and Black

Author's Note: This is the third part of my series _Insidious Intents_, though it should make sense on its own. The first parts are _We Have Lingered in the Chambers of the Sea _and _Indeed There Will Be Time_, and are in my profile. This comes to you un-betaed, so I deeply apologize for all the mistakes I didn't catch.

Disclaimer: JKR's universe. I'm just playing in it. Titles all come from T. S. Elliot's _The Love Song of J. Alfred __Prufrock._

* * *

Nuremgard was not a pleasant place in the slightest. It never had been to begin with, but now that it had become an obvious prison, there was something strange and wrong with it. At first Albus had been able to pretend Nuremgard was a castle like any other- like Hogwarts, even- but then he went in and saw the dungeons. Then he went in and saw where they would keep Gellert Grindelwald, up in a high, unpleasant tower with bars that striped the sunlight and let the wind in, to blow one's hair into elf knots and tangle one's thoughts together into nothingness.

Dumbledore left Nuremgard after casting several extremely powerful wards with the Elder Wand. He went back to Hogwarts after that and sat in his high tower room with the windows open, holding his head in his hands. Albus had cast almost unnoticeable charms to keep Gellert warm in winter and cool in summer, to keep out the mice and the insects, to make sure Gellert's shaving water stayed warm and he never ran out of ink, or parchment, or quills. It was incredibly stupid.

Dumbledore hated himself for his strange, unconquerable _weakness _around Gellert. He couldn't attend the trial and couldn't read about it in the newspapers. Minerva had come to him on the day of the trial, her black hair falling out of her neat bun.

"Albus!"

It occurred to him that he didn't really like the name 'Albus'. True, it had a certain poetry to it, but _Albus_. It didn't have a terribly interesting meaning either. 'White'. Ha. It was a strange, silly sort of name. 'Dumbledore' admittedly wasn't much better, but it had some semblance of gravitas. Albus sounded like the name of an Irish setter or a golden retriever. Dumbledore stroked Fawkes's long, swan-like neck.

"Albus!"

He turned. "Yes Minerva?"

She brandished the paper at him. "Have you read _The Daily Prophet_?"

"No, and I assume that you wish to tell me everything I need to know about it." He smiled at Minerva over Fawkes's brilliant red plumage. She looked like a student in her long black robes, though the robes washed her out and made her look strangely pale.

"You really ought to read the papers, Albus."

"Oh, they enjoy telling so many lies about me I'll grow too confused to teach lessons. Would you care for a sherbet lemon, Minerva? Oh, I'm sorry, you like biscuits better. I may have some excellent Ginger Newts left over from tea. Fawkes is so very fond of them."

"Albus!" Minerva exclaimed.

"No one ever has time for sweets anymore, do they?" Dumbledore asked, taking a biscuit and crumbling it up. "Fawkes, will you take another?"

"Sir-"

"Yes?" Dumbledore asked, as Fawkes calmly ate of his hands.

"Sir, Gellert Grindelwald has been sentenced to several lifetimes in Nuremgard."

"I had expected that," he managed to say, more or less indifferently. He closed his eyes, until he could pretend everything in the world was as calm and quiet and dark as what he saw. "Anything else?"

"Well, he pleaded 'not guilty' because of exonerating circumstances." Dumbledore heard the grimace in her voice. "As in… oh, the way they summarized it! 'His attempts to better the world, Grindelwald argued, surely mitigated the regrettable loss of life. He asked the court to consider the vastly improved quality of life in his empire. Grindelwald is considered to be responsible for roughly five million deaths, including most of the Muggle deaths caused by Grindelwald's puppet, Hitler.'"

He opened his eyes, the gray stones of his office swimming back into view. "Grindelwald's puppet?"

"Well, _yes_, Albus. Everyone knows Grindelwald had been controlling him, using him as a sort of Muggle decoy."

He looked around sharply at Minerva, who stood behind him with the open paper, the paper itself starkly white under the black newsprint. "The Imperius curse stopped working. Hitler tried to throw it off several times and the struggle drove him insane."

"And that makes Grindelwald's atrocities any better?" Minerva demanded. "He drove the Muggle insane, Albus. Grindelwald's still as responsible for this as if he'd been controlling Hitler the whole time."

"We cannot make such casual distinctions, Minerva," Dumbledore replied sharply. "Grindelwald thought that he was doing the right thing."

Minerva stared at him over the paper, looking entirely shocked. "Albus, I don't understand. Unless… you… have doubts about what you did?"

Dumbledore glared down at Fawkes, almost lost in the familiar resentment, the familiar isolation. No one ever understood him entirely. They got so incredibly tired of swimming in rough, gray seas of thought and had to see only the incredible whiteness of the wave tips and the unfathomable blackness of the deep. There was nothing in between.

Minerva, though she was a clever girl, though she was intelligent and put-together and very wise for her age, failed to understand him and pressed on. "Is it… how… did you defeat Gellert Grindelwald?"

Dumbledore forced himself to blink away the resentment and turned back to her with a smile. "What do you mean, Minerva?"

She looked uncertain. "Did you… have to do something very… underhanded, sir, to win? Something Slytherin?"

Dumbledore considered this carefully. "In a manner of speaking, yes." He took the paper from her and couldn't immediately force himself to look at it. It had just come out and the newsprint had smudged the ink all over Minerva's pale hands. "And I cannot allow myself to think that the ends justified the means. No, Minerva, I am greatly disappointed in myself."

"Is that why you've been throwing out all the calls for you to become a member of the Ministry?"

"More or less," Dumbledore lied. He knew he would become corrupted by the power. He had never been as strong as Gellert who remained true to his vision, as terrible and terrifying as that vision had become. He forced himself to read the article.

There was something off-putting and almost cruel about seeing the entire record of the battle, the trial, and Grindelwald's newly named Reign of Terror, captured in several short, clipped sentences, imprisoned in black type on white paper.

"Sir?" Minerva asked, touching Albus on the sleeve of his blue-gray robe. "You did the right thing."

How could anyone ever determine that?

He felt adrift, embittered, tainted and- and nigh on _evil_. He had used Gellert's love for him to force Gellert into prison. Yes, Gellert's actions had been wrong, unequivocally wrong and his empire unjustified, but Gellert had been so sure he was doing the right thing.

And Dumbledore had known Gellert's greatest weakness and ruthlessly exploited it. He didn't allow himself to think if it was right or wrong, lying to Gellert, breaking Gellert by depriving him of their love. He had done what he had had to do in the situation, and if he tried to fix it in the sliding grayscale of morality, he knew that it would be far darker than he could comfortably live with.

Dumbledore wanted to break something, to force out the overwhelming wave of anger at the sheer malevolence of defeating Gellert with more lies than truth, at driving the one person he would ever love into an insanity that had always crackled behind Gellert's smile, hidden in the sheer force of Dumbledore's infatuation.

He smiled instead. "Thank you Minerva."

When she left, he threw the paper into the fire, until it burned into gray flecks of ash. Dumbledore poked at the fire furiously, the flames leaping up, distorting everything in his office with its yellow-ish light. Fires were such strange things. They had so many colors in them, blue at the tips (always surprising), red in the burning embers, that odd spectrum of yellow and orange in the flame itself-

The Minister of Magic's silver-haired head popped up into the flames, and Dumbledore hid his scowl in a badly faked cough.

Marjorie Stelthack turned to glare up at him. "About time you started up a fire. We've been trying to contact you for a week. Funnily enough, our owls seem to all have gotten lost."

Dumbledore assumed an innocent expression. "Oh really?"

Stelthack continued to glare at him, the blue bits of the flames licking around her pearl earrings, her gray eyes intense. "Yes."

"How very strange."

"We thought so too."

Dumbledore did cast a very good Befuddlement charm.

She eyed him speculatively. "Dumbledore, I don't suppose we can interest you in a governmental office? You can keep your position at Hogwarts and you can assume as many or as few responsibilities as you so desire."

"Oh, I'm afraid you can't," Dumbledore replied cheerily.

"How else are we to thank you?" Stelthack demanded.

Dumbledore forced his smile to stay on his face. "Oh, I'd really rather not be thanked, but I am very fond of lemon drops and chocolate frogs."

Stelthack stared. She often did when confronted with Dumbledore's cheery façade. "I don't think I'll ever quite understand you. Well, no matter. I hate to ask, but if you would kindly visit Grindelwald to recheck the fortifications…?"

"I already warded the cell," Dumbledore replied, moving away from the fire. "I was just having tea. Would you care for a Ginger Newt, Minister?"

She made a 'tsk'ing noise. "No thank you. Yes, I know you did, but we'll have to ask you to go at least one every six-month to recheck the wards. The jailors insist on it and I'm sure the public will as well. You'll need to go more frequently for the first two years, at least. Most escapes happen immediately after imprisonment."

"He won't escape," Dumbledore remarked, a little off-handedly.

"How do you know that? How can you say with such absolute surety that he will not escape?"

He poured himself a cup of tea and, with a lazy flick of his wand, stirred in cream and an appalling amount of sugar. "I will never be able to say I could make Gellert Grindelwald do anything he did not wish to do already, but I very much doubt he'll be inclined to leave captivity."

Stelthack raised her eyebrows. "And you can say this because…?"

"Because," Dumbledore replied imperturbably, "he's seen what happened to his other followers. And because he knows that if he leaves captivity I will die before letting him regain power. He does not want that. I know that to be true."

The fire crackled. Perhaps crackle was not quite the right word? It seemed such a brown sound, like hazelnuts, and fire was always bright-

"Visit him within the month," Stelthack said, and vanished.

The month technically ended in a fortnight, but Dumbledore maliciously waited four weeks, until Stelthack set him a chocolate frog card with his picture on it, to go back to Nuremgard.

It was very dark when he arrived, and it took the guards several minutes to realize who he was and let him into the fortress. Gellert's main guard herself came down to lead Dumbledore up to Gellert's cell.

"I'm glad you've come," the guard said, flicking her bangs out of her eyes. "Grindelwald's been a right nuisance for the past fortnight."

Technically, Dumbledore had promised Gellertto visit every month as well.

"Has he been?"

"Yeah. Took out an entire detachment when we tried to subdue him. Not much fight left in him now."

"Oh really?" Dumbledore asked, from behind his smile.

"Yeah." She waved away what seemed like an entire platoon of guards as they went through a ridiculous number of doors and wards. "Here we are."

Grindelwald's hair looked black in the shadows of her tower cell, his gray nightshirt the same color as the blocks of moonlight on the hard stone floor. He lay motionless on his cot.

"Asleep," the guard informed Dumbledore, nodding at the nine guards on duty.

Dumbledore walked forward and suddenly realized that everything was wrong. Where was Gellert's flash? His sparkle? That wild, golden, uncontrollable energy that blazed like the summer sun or flashed like sheet lightening? And his hair…. "Leave us, please? Lock the door after yourselves."

The guard lifted her shoulder in a shrug and flicked her bangs out of her eyes again. "Suit yourself."

She had blood on her hands.

Albus felt sick. "Gellert," he hissed, once all the guards had gone, "wake up. It's Albus."

He didn't move.

"Gellert!"

Dumbledore wrapped his fingers around the bars, his glasses pressed against his face. Gellert looked terrible, with his golden hair matted with blood, and more bruises and cuts than clear skin. Legs weren't supposed to twist like that, and surely you had to breathe more often than that-

Albus slashed the Elder Wand down across the bars and nearly ran over to Gellert. He was too thin under Albus's hand, his shoulder-bones jutting out like the hewn-off stumps of angel wings. "Gellert, please. It's Albus."

Gellert shifted positions and Albus, panicked, sent every healing spell he knew at Gellert. No, no, no, Gellert couldn't be- why couldn't Albus see _Gellert_? Where was the boy he'd fallen in love with, who sparkled like broken glass and sheet lightening? Where was his smile? Where was his bubbling enthusiasm?

Where was his _life?_

Gellert opened his eyes, disoriented, and stared at Albus a few minutes.

"Are you alright?" Albus asked.

"I hate you," Gellert said and, closing his eyes, rolled over to go back to sleep.

Albus stared at the back of Gellert's nightshirt and watched the bruises on Gellert's back fade. The nightshirt, Albus realized, had actually been one of the white ones he'd bought at Gellert's request. It had only looked gray because Gellert's back had been entirely black with bruises and badly healed, clotting cuts. Albus felt terrible and so incredibly guilty he wanted to crawl back into his office and never, ever look anyone in the face again. "You're quite allowed to do that. Perhaps you would like me to help you wash your hair, first?"

"I couldn't move me arms for a week, and I still hate you," Gellert told his pillow. "Go away."

"It's far too late for that," Albus replied cheerily.

Gellert rolled over to glare at him. "Just fuck off, Albus."

Albus stared. "G- Gellert?"

"You lied," Gellert said. "You didn't come and I got angry and they were just _waiting_."

"I didn't mean- what did they do to you?"

Gellert sat up. "Everything I did to them when they first tried to do something but I didn't have a wand." He flexed his wand hand unhappily. "I can't do much without a _wand_, though I did enough."

Albus didn't know what to say, and stared at anywhere but Gellert.

"Why didn't you _come?_" Gellert demanded suddenly, pushing away Albus and his coverlet. He forced himself onto his feet, the moonlight making his nightshirt almost transparent. He was so painfully thin under his nightshirt, little more than a series of dark lines under the white fabric.

"Why do you think?" Albus asked.

"I can't think!" Gellert snapped, fisting his hands in his bloodied hair. "I can't _think _up here and when you didn't come I got angry but I _have no wand _so I couldn't blow anything up for weeks and it drove me insane until I made my old bed explode and they just _waited _for it and…." Gellert cut himself off, pressing his lips together and humming the Flight of the Valkeries. "_You didn't come_."

"I couldn't!" Albus snapped. "Gellert, how could I face you after I'd-?"

"Because I _forgive you_!" Gellert snarled, sounding the least forgiving Albus had ever heard him. "Because we _love each other_."

Albus stood from his crouch by Gellert's bed. "Gellert, you have no idea what I've had to go through."

"You think _I _can't understand _you_?" Gellert demanded, incensed. "We've always understood each other, we're the only people to understand each other, and I wouldn't _understand you_?" Gellert suddenly whirled on Albus and punched him in the jaw.

Albus tried to grab Gellert, who, for all his bruises, was still as uncontrollable and uncontainable as ever when he didn't want to be controlled or contained, and they fought furiously. Neither ever had the upper-hand. They knew each other too well, guessed at each others' next moves, knew each others' weaknesses and exploited them almost ruthlessly until Gellert broke Albus's glasses and burst into tears.

"You didn't come!" Gellert howled, spent, clutching Albus desperately. "You didn't come and you promised!"

They slid down onto the floor together and Albus cradled Gellert to him, stroking his matted hair. It was fairly disgusting so Albus used a covert _Scourgify_until Gellert's hair gleamed like gold leaf on old books. "Shh, shh. I know."

"That doesn't make it alright!"

"No, it doesn't."

"You're a liar!"

"Of course I am. Gellert, you are one of the few people in the world who are actually, truly honest. You never did pretend you didn't have those ambitions. "

Gellert clung to him, his forehead against Albus's neck. "I don't even have a cat yet."

Albus tapped the shattered remains of his glasses with the Elder Wand. "_Reparo_. I'm sorry, Gellert. You wanted a ginger one."

"Yes, and I'm sure you notice my obvious lack of cat. Albus, you have gray hairs." Gellert tapped Albus's jaw. "In your beard. You must have them in your hair, too. That's sad. I like your hair. It's the color of phoenix feathers. Albus, they kept saying I was evil. It was very bothersome."

"Gellert, you sort of… were."

Gellert fluttered his fingers. "I didn't think you'd say you'd define me like that. We never went in for labels."

"You can't say we're above morality," Albus said, stroking Gellert's golden hair.

"Of course I'm not saying that," Gellert replied, looking surprised. "All I mean is that morality in and of itself Albus, is highly subjective."

"You deny that there's an absolute right and an absolute wrong?"

Gellert looked up him, his sea-green eyes looking dark and different in the moonlight. "No. But those are concepts so huge and unshakable it would break any mind other than ours to understand it completely."

Albus shook his head, breaking off eye-contact, though he clutched Gellert to him as desperately as ever. "No, Gellert. I cannot agree. There is definite Good and definite Evil. The problem is that those are very… very stark concepts and there are various interlayerings of morality in between the two extremes. It's much easier for ordinary people to see plain good and plain evil and not the whole spectrum in between."

Gellert nestled in Albus's arms, his pneumatic warmth tantalizingly familiar and wonderful and terrible all at once.

"You do have a point." He looked up at Albus. "Do you think I'm evil?"

"No more than me," Albus replied bitterly.

Gellert shifted to kneel in front of Albus, cupping Albus's face in his hands, tilting his head as if to re-examine Albus. "You're not evil. You're Albus."

Albus nearly wanted to cry. After all that he'd done to Gellert- and after all the millions of people he had not saved- "Gellert-"

"Shh." Gellert closed the distance between them and kissed Albus, sweetly, gently, softly- almost chastely. "Do you still love me?"

Albus leaned his forehead against Gellert's. "How could I stop?"

"Then you're not evil," Gellert replied, matter-of-factly. "I don't think anyone really evil knows how to love like we do. I've studied it. You gave me books." He waved vaguely at the shelves around him. "Like Dorian Gray. He started off pure and virtuous and beautiful and he had a portrait painted. When he stopped loving people, when he began to love himself and his own pleasure above all, the portrait changed and mutated and distorted and reflected how evil he'd truly become. Their love becomes tainted, corrupted. Ours isn't. We can't be evil, then."

"Gellert, you created a totalitarian regime that caused five million deaths, untold casualties, a wizarding and a Muggle world war, and a legacy of anti-Muggle sentiment that will drive us back even further into isolation."

Gellert scowled. "Well yes, but I had good intentions."

Albus tried to laugh, but didn't quite manage it. He kissed Gellert instead, and wondered how he'd ever managed to live so long without it. "I don't think that was enough."

"Is this?" asked Gellert, kissing him again. When Albus closed his eyes, they were both still young again, and everything else melted away in the flame of their passion, bright and hot and all-consuming. Albus could never forget the feel of Gellert, the unexpected softness of his hands, the way his curls caught at Albus's fingers. Gellert impatiently undid Albus's belt and yanked off his own nightshirt until nothing separated them at all.

Gellert gently traced the curve of Albus's cheek, smiling faintly at the feel of Albus's beard against his fingertips and traced down his neck to his chest, placing a hand over Albus's heart and splaying his fingers there. "Be honest with me."

"I couldn't be otherwise," Albus replied, and it was impossible for him to lie when they were like this, and Gellert's smile seemed so strangely sad. He could see the scars and cuts and fading bruises all over Gellert, could see how painfully thin he was. The flesh of Gellert's face felt paper-thin when Albus cupped Gellert's cheek and slid a hand up into his hair again.

Gellert's flawed, imperfect body was the most beautiful thing Albus had ever seen, and he kissed Gellert, feeling the rush of pleasure in touch, the startlingly hedonistic thrill of Gellert's lips against his throat and face as they clung to each other like shipwrecked sailors to pieces of wood, hands dancing, trailing fire over changed curves and panes.

Gellert lay on top of him, the only source of warmth in the dull, dismal cell, and Albus loved him so fiercely he could do nothing but cling to Gellert and roll them over, trying to blindly push them closer and closer and closer until everything separating them melting away in Gellert's pants, hot against his lips, and their tangling hair and that building thrill of pure pleasure. Gellert felt feverishly hot as he pressed back against Albus and his heat melded them together- he was so gloriously, familiarly Gellert, his fingers dancing down Albus's spine, making the blood rush to Albus's skin and making him feel so gloriously alive, tingling with Gellert's touch.

They held each other in the darkness until the sun rose behind the clouds, casting a dull, dim gray light into the cell.

"It's back to good and evil now," Gellert said into Albus's chest.

"Unfortunately," Albus replied. He kissed Gellert and dressed.

"Every month," Gellert said, burrowing into his sheets and the shadowy corner of the cell where his bed was. "And no lying to me, because I don't like fighting with you."

"I promise," Albus said, and left the cell.

The head guard looked at Albus and followed him out of Nuremgard. The wind blew her dark bangs into her eyes, and tangled Albus's hair as caressingly as Gellert's. Albus closed his eyes against the memory of Gellert's hair sliding through his fingers, and the feel of Gellert's body pressed against his own.

"I'll come back in a month," Dumbledore said, turning to the guard. "You won't have any trouble with him."

The guard nodded and Dumbledore silently went back to Hogwarts, to sit in his own gray tower room and cross off the days- black ink against white parchment again, everywhere- until he could leave Hogwarts at dusk and return at dawn, in a different gray room where, for a night, everything could be just as complicated as he knew it to be.


	2. I Have Gone At Dusk ThroughNarrowStreets

Grindelwald had always been a good prisoner. Though still prone of the occasional fit of manic energy, he was quite content not to heckle his jailers. It had something to do, Frieda imaged, with Grindelwald's unusual liberties. They gave him books and newspapers once it was clear that he couldn't turn them into weapons somehow and allowed him to wear the fashionable robes an anonymous friend sent in. They let him keep his ginger cat (Wulfric- a very odd name for a _cat_, of all things) and gave him cat food along with the prison mush. He sent and received letters (though they were always opened by the guards and tested for every imaginable hex or curse).

Of course, he was beaten if he did not obey. Grindelwald was much less threatening without his wand (though still, he laughed when they beat him, and that was truly terrifying after too long). After the first year or so, Frieda liked to keep her hands clean when this happened. She knew just how destructive Grindelwald could be- and Dumbledore got very angry when the guards took matters into their own hands.

If there was one person more frightening than Gellert Grindelwald while he was laughing at his own torture, it was Albus Dumbledore angry.

Frieda did not like taking chances.

Grindelwald obeyed her because she stopped the other guards from beating him out of boredom, and she was grateful for that. She had few ambitions outside of keeping Grindelwald behind bars, and any way to help in that end was an unequivocal good.

Frieda considered Dumbledore one of the greatest goods of the whole imprisonment system. Dumbledore himself came every month or so (because even if Grindelwald was a good prisoner, it was never a good idea to take that for granted) and on the days when Grindelwald boiled over with frustration, paced his cell, snarled at Frieda, and tore at his books. After Dumbledore's private visit (Frieda didn't supervise; she figured that the man who had defeated Grindelwald and ended his empire ought to still be able to handle him after half a century), Grindelwald would be very calm and quiet, as if only a show of force from the man who had beaten him could keep him from trying to escape and take over again.

Frieda often wrote to Dumbledore when Grindelwald was like this, because Grindelwald had killed her parents and you could never overestimate just what Grindelwald could do. She could not entirely believe that he stayed in his cell for any reason other than Dumbledore, after all, and she had never been idealistic enough to think she could subdue Grindelwald if he wasn't willing to be subdued.

Every time she looked in that cell, saw the manic grin, the golden hair fading to gray, she thought of her parents, locked in a reeducation camp. She thought of how she had been forced into the Grindelwald Youth and taught all the finer points of life under his benevolent dictatorship- such as the improved freedoms of the magical world. She thought of the lock of unfamiliar white hair that had been given to her, at the end of the war- the only physical proof that her mother had lived and died in a reeducation camp.

And then, when it grew to be too much, she would write to Dumbledore that Grindelwald was fretful and violent- that they had put a calming potion in his soup, but it was not quite enough- that he must come immediately.

Dumbledore would come, and Frieda would sit alone and think of Dumbledore forcing Grindelwald into submission-

And though she was ashamed of it afterwards, it was worth it.

She could always count on Dumbledore.

Or at least, she could before.

Now, Frieda thought staring into the cell, she didn't have that option. She was on her own in this. Dumbledore was dead.

And the most powerful and evil Dark Wizard of the century sat in the corner of his cell, howling. He rocked back and forth, back and forth- like some sort of possessed rocking horse- tearing at his silver hair as if he would rip it out. There was a newspaper spread in front of him- or there had been. All at once Grindelwald ripped it to shreds and threw it at his cat. Grindelwald whirled on her and said, "You- you stop it when they torture me! Stop this! _Stop this_!"

"Stop what?" she asked, and Grindelwald burst into tears.

She almost pitied him then, but then she thought of the lock of white hair and her heart hardened.

"What's wrong with him?" Conrad asked, after a few moments. Conrad was new, but he had seen the scars on his grandparents, the numbers magically tattooed into their forearms from the reeducation camps.

"No idea," Frieda replied. "I gave him his evening newspapers and he just started in on- on this."

"Strange," said Conrad, eyeing Grindelwald. "Couldn't you write to-?"

"Did you read the papers?" Frieda asked.

"No," Conrad replied, looking puzzled.

The feeling of despair clouded out everything. It took her no little effort to speak. "Dumbledore is dead. He was killed by… who was he? Severus Snape."

"Is Snape the new Dark Lord, then?"

Frieda shook her head. "No, he works for the new one. Snape is a Death Eater."

"Ah. Bet old Gelly here can't stand the thought of some new Dark Lord running around out there, killing at will, while he's stuck in here."

That made as much sense as anything else. Frieda felt a sharp surge of hatred to break the overwhelming bleakness that came from Dumbledore's death. There was an odd excitement tinged with the dread- who would control Grindelwald now? Was it up to her?- and Frieda quashed it down ruthlessly.

Grindelwald stood, shakily, clutching the newspaper to his chest. He staggered to the bars and pressed the front page against them.

"He's dead," Grindelwald said, in a tone of such grief Frieda had trouble believing that Grindelwald had spoken. "He's dead."

"Dumbledore?" snarled Conrad. "Gladdens your heart, doesn't it?"

"Don't talk to the prisoner," Frieda snapped.

Grindelwald's glare could have, quite possibly, killed Conrad on the spot. Still holding the paper, he stretched an arm out through the bars (causing himself considerable pain- he was to get an electric shock each time he went through the bars, increasing in intensity until he returned to his cell) and grabbed Conrad by the front of the shirt. Conrad's wand clattered to the floor. "Do not," Grindelwald hissed, "attempt to tell me how I feel. Put down your wand!" he snapped at Frieda. "You _will _hit Conrad instead."

Conrad tried to keep a brave front. "I can tell you how you _fell_, then, you psycho! D-Dumbledore defeated you!"

Grindelwald slammed Conrad against the bars. "Do you want to know why Dumbledore won? _I let him, you fool_. I knew if I continued, I would kill him."

"W-wishful th-thinking," muttered Conrad, before Grindelwald slammed him against the bars again. Frieda stepped forward, arm raised, until Grindelwald practically drew Conrad into his cell.

"_No_. It wasn't. Now, unless you-" he looked at Frieda, his eyes dark and glinting in the shadows behind Conrad "-get me some mourning clothes, I will bash his head in. If that doesn't convince you, I will send word to Voldemort I will back his bid for power. _He _would get me morning clothes. He would even give me the Resurrection Stone in return for the Elder Wand!"

"What is the Elder Wand?"

Keep him talking, that was the ticket. Eventually, the pain from the bars would make him give up.

Grindelwald _laughed. _"Voldemort's ticket to power, little girl. He would take over the world!" He sounded almost pleasant, as if he were making small-talk over tea. "No one wants that, do they? Everyone's rather _attached _to the world and it will be _very unpleasant _if Voldemort goes on a rampage." He laughed again, even more wildly. "Not for me though! No, never, never for me! I don't care anymore. The world is as broken as I am. Everyone's done everything that they could possibly do to me. You've beat me and starved me and kept him for me and ignored me, and now you can't do anything else to me that could possibly make me suffer."

Conrad gasped and clawed at Grindelwald's hand, Conrad's wand lying too far away on the floor for him to reach. "Y-you c-c-can… can… always… su…."

Grindelwald increased the pressure until Conrad couldn't speak anymore. "What? I can always suffer more?" He appeared to be almost cheerily thoughtful at this. "Actually, no. I did terrible things, I admit, because they had to done. However, I have had terrible things done to me that, alas, were completely unnecessary. Hard to imagine that I had worse jailers than you, Conrad, but Stelthack and the rest overpowered Dumbledore. Ever wondered why I lost all my teeth and Dumbledore had to send me dentures? It's a fascinating story, Conrad, my friend. But I don't think you'll be able to hear it because Frieda here isn't agreeing about my mourning clothes and so you're going to be _dead _very shortly and, quite frankly, I'd rather die right now, so killing you and being killed for it myself isn't all that terrible of a fate."

"No. We'll get you the clothes." Frieda said, stepping to the side she to get a better aim on Grindelwald. "Put Conrad down."

"I want to go to the funeral," Grindelwald added.

"No," Frieda replied, as calmly and reasonably as she could while watching Grindelwald strangle someone. "Put Conrad down. I will go to the funeral and give you my memory of it. You need to stop choking Conrard. You need to let him breathe. Put Conrad down _now._"

"Your promise. I want an Unbreakable Vow."

Frieda stared at him.

"Your friend is turning blue," Grindelwald said cheerily. Frieda could see burns spreading over Grindelwald's hand. He didn't seem to notice. "Do as I say and I will put him down. There is nothing keeping me from killing him."

"Fine. I swear, but only to _those two articles_. If you say anything else, I will pull my hand away and I will not swear to anything at all. You need to put Conrad down now, if he is to be our bonder. Put Conrad down. He's stopped moving. You need to put him down."

"Fine." Grindelwald dropped Conrad to a heap on the floor and withdrew his hand.

Conrad gasped for breath, clutching at the suddenly too-tight collar of his robes.

"Conrad will be our Bonder. If you _think_ of breaking your promise, do know that the only reason I have been staying in this cell is because of Dumbledore." He smiled pleasantly. "It is still the only reason I stay here, trapped. I'll be gone soon. I saw the papers. I know I'll be gone and I'll be glad of it. I'm going to join him again and it will be just like when we were young and I was happy. Conrad is breathing again." He thrust his right hand out of the cell and Frieda clasped it in her left. "Bond us."

Conrad did.

Frieda trebled the guards outside and took the night shift. Anger kept her awake.

Conrad came in around midnight to give Frieda a set of black mourning robes, which Frieda tossed into the cell.

"Here."

Grindelwald crept out of a pool of shadow and grabbed them with one pale, claw-like hand. He pulled them back into his little corner of darkness.

"Bastard," growled Conrad.

"Go away," Grindelwald said mulishly. "I'm not in the mood to kill you anymore."

For some reason, this infuriated Conrad, who stepped forward, wand raised-

"Get the hell out," Frieda snapped. "Go, Conrad. He's just trying to get you to kill him now."

Conrad looked dumbfounded. "Why…?"

Frieda glared into the cell. "He can't kill himself, now can he?" She reached out and physically lowered Conrad's wand arm. "Go. It's crueler to let him live."

Grindelwald laughed.

After Conrad left, however, Grindelwald changed into his mourning clothes, turned off the lights, and went to bed. Or, at least- Frieda assumed so. About fifteen minutes later, she heard sobs echoing in the darkness.

It was a really strange experience.

Eventually, she switched on the lights, transfigured a gum wrapper into a box of tissues, and slid it through the bars. "Use these, not your sleeve."

Grindelwald blew his nose.

"Why are you so choked up about this?" Frieda demanded, curiosity getting the better of her for the first time in nearly thirty years of guard duty.

Grindelwald sat in the middle of his cell, looking skeletal and oddly vulnerable for someone who had nearly killed his guard two hours ago. "You would never understand. Few people do."

"Try me," Frieda said.

"Love," Grindelwald said, very simply.

Frieda stared at him, at the slices of moonlight that came through the barred windows and dappled him in black and white. "You're right, I don't."

Grindelwald began to laugh. He put his clenched fist to his mouth and giggled, the sound high and rather youthful and extraordinarily strange. Frieda held her wand uneasily.

After a moment, Grindelwald wiped his eyes with a tissue and picked up his sleeping cat. "You know Frieda, I like you. You never treated me badly. Just indifferently."

Frieda wasn't quite sure how to interpret this.

"Because I like you, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to tell your future for you."

"You're a Seer?" Frieda asked skeptically. She knew Gellert Grindelwald's idiosyncrasies very well after all these years. She knew she had been chosen to join the Grindelwald Youth because she had been pretty as a child, because Gellert Grindelwald loved beauty.

She also knew she had spilled acid on her face to get out of the Youth.

"No," Grindelwald said, his smile bright and cheerful. She understood how Grindelwald had once been so compelling and she hated him for it. "Not a bit. I'm a genius."

There was no denying that.

Grindelwald smiled at her still, his cat a silent ball of orange fluff spilling out of his arms. "You see, the world moves in patterns. People get stuck into patterns of behavior and they act the same way, over and over and over again. I should have expected… expected this." His smile cracked around the edges. Frieda could still see the remnants of that youthful beauty, but it was strange and broken, and beautiful as an oil spill on a mountain lake was beautiful. "He was always too noble for his own good, Albus. Far too noble. He was bound to die like this. He loved, you see. He loved people deeply and sacrificed everything for them. He could have been great."

Frieda watched him impassively, her hand fisted around her wand.

"Yes," Grindelwald said, stroking his cat. "He could have been great, but he chose not to be. I could have stayed great too. But I didn't. And Voldemort will never be half as great as I was." Grindelwald giggled again. "No. He doesn't understand, he never did. You don't either, but you're clever enough, you'll get it eventually. But what was I talking about? Oh yes, patterns. Like you." He tilted his head to the side, white curls falling across the new black mourning robes. "I killed your parents, didn't I? You mentioned it once, when Johann asked why you requested to be on duty here. You are driven by their memory to guard me, to keep me from ever doing to anyone else what I did to them. I didn't do much to them, girl, but because I did something to that that you can never forgive, I'm always a villain. Things are never that easy."

Grindelwald went to stare out the window. Everything was oddly monochromatic at night, noted the small bit of Frieda's brain that wasn't mind-numbingly furious.

"No," mused Grindelwald. "But I'm a villain in your pantomime of life (I used to love pantomimes- I went to them with… well, never mind). I'm the villain because I did unforgivable things. In that case, Voldemort is a villain too, because he did unforgivable things. He's a villain to me, though, because he caused something to happen that I can never, ever forgive, which makes him a villain in my eyes, so oughtn't that to make him your hero? Or, at the very least, doesn't that make us on the same side?"

Frieda counted to ten in all the languages she knew. She never regretted learning only two languages before that moment. "What are you trying to say?"

"What I'm trying to say," Grindelwald said, very slowly, as if explaining to a toddler why she shouldn't eat glue, "is that I am not as different from you as you would like to believe. I am not as different from Dumbledore as you would like to believe. Voldemort is. And that is why there is no need for you to look at me that way, as if you didn't understand."

Frieda still didn't understand.

"I said I would tell your future, didn't I?" Grindelwald said, rather suddenly. "Well, alright. I should have known this was- but I didn't want to. There's nothing blocking my mind now, you know. Well, Voldemort is going to come, girl. I wouldn't up the security if I were you; it only means more bodies. Voldemort kills too much for my liking. So _unnecessary._" Grindelwald shook his head. "Very bad form. Very bad. He is going to come and if you know what's good for you, you will hide. He will kill me and then he will be killed by Albus's protégée. And then Albus's protégée will grow up and grow old and have protégées of his own and a new Dark Lord will try to fix everything wrong in the world and fail, like usual. You know, I pride myself on coming the closest. If it hadn't been for Albus's stubborn streak, the world would be so much better than it is."

His shook his head again, his silver curls dancing in the darkness of the room. "The world is a silly place."

"What do you want?" Frieda asked, vaguely intrigued. This was a Grindelwald she did not understand and it frightened her that this facet of his personality would prove to "Besides trying to get me to trust you."

"I'm trying to get you to understand," Grindelwald said, with a sort of hurt innocence. "Because- because the one other person in the world who did just died, and I want _someone _to understand. I'll be dead soon." His false teeth glinted palely in the moonlight. "No more Gellert Grindelwald. Just like there's no more Albus Dumbledore."

Frieda started to catch on. It made sense that the one person on earth to defeat Gellert Grindelwald was the one person who could understand the strange, broken mirror of his mind. Why he thought _she _could understand was another question entirely.

She stared at Grindelwald, all shadows and highlights, his cat the only spark of color in the cell and thought.

The next day, after a nap, she Apparated to England and went to Hogwarts for the funeral. She watched everything very carefully, though she could understand next to none of it. Frieda had learned French and German, and only knew enough English to ask for directions.

The service itself she thought boring. After all, she couldn't understand a word.

Afterwards, she paid her stilted respects to the British Minister of Magic, and his red-haired assistant was kind enough not to look too much at her scarred face and to matter-of-factly translate the Minister's English into intelligible German.

After a pause, the red-head said, "Grindelwald was mentioned in Dumbledore's will."

Frieda blinked. "Really?"

The red-head shot a very nervous glance at his employer. "Yes- I- we-"

Ah, the Minister knew nothing about it.

"It was written in German," the red-head concluded, a little lamely. He was still so very young, his horn-rim glasses dominating his face- and he was so pale and thin! Frieda felt quite sorry for him. Did he have a mother to make him struedel when he was sad? "The Minister does not read German. I- I told him it said… it said Dumbledore was- was leaving his books to Grindelwald, in the hopes it would reform him, and some old letters. It was… a very loose translation."

"What did it really say?"

He fiddled with his glasses. "I did not- it is important for people to have- to have lies they can believe in, to make everything clear." The boy- for he could not be older than eighteen, and everyone under thirty was a boy or a girl to Frieda- cleared his throat. "My German- I beg forgiveness, I am not Mr. Crouch."

Frieda had a vague recollection of a man with moustache as neat and precise as his German. "You are doing very well. It is necessary to have- to have very clearly defined heroes and villains."

"Yes," the boy said slowly. "I suppose… but it makes it very hard to understand when you realize that there aren't any. There's just- just you and wrong opinions." He turned to the Minister and said something in very quick English. "I'm Percy Weasley, by the by," he added, jerking his chin over to the lake. "Would you walk with me, please?"

Frieda did so and, after a moment, Weasley said, "I hope- I hope you do not take this wrongly. I am- I am telling you this because I know it would… very much upset people everywhere to- to know what I know now." His German was very clumsy now, badly accented, the words tumbling over one another without sticking together properly. "I- it…." He trailed off, muttered in English. "Fine. He- he calls Grindelwald Gellert, first of all and leaves 'Gellert' his personal library. And- and then it gets very strange. I remember the phrase exactly. To my untarnished Dorian Gray, I leave the letters that so cheered me and all the love I posess." Weasley pulled several well-worn letters out of his pocket. They were tied with silver ribbon. "And in these letters…."

Weasley looked at her strangely. "Did you know?"

"Did I know what?" Frieda asked.

Weasley pressed the letters into her hand. "I was Head Boy under Dumbledore, once. He told me that love will always triumph over all." He paused.

Frieda narrowed her eyes.

"I mean," Weasley hastened to add on, "I mean- I always knew Dumbledore was a liar. I just… didn't know how good he was at it. He spoke in half-truths all the time. Love… did triumph in his own experience, just… more literally than- than anyone would ever be comfortable about." Another pause. It was nearing dusk, and the dying sunlight gilded the water, the letter, Percy Weasley's pale, freckled face. "I- Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, according to these letters, because Grindelwald was in love with him. Grindelwald let him win, out of love for him."

"Grindelwald is incapable of love," Frieda replied automatically. She pulled off the ribbon and began to read through the letters.

"Absolutes," Weasley said, a little distantly. "I remember believing in them once. Give them to Grindelwald or burn them, it's your choice. I passed them along, according to the law and Dumbledore's last will and testament." He looked out at the lake. "I wish I believed in them l, absolutes. It's like life robs all the comfort from you, sometimes."

Frieda said nothing.

'_My beloved Albus_,' she read, and the words circled through her mind again and again and again.


	3. Til Human Voices Wake Us

Frieda returned to Germany in a state of unusual perturbation. She distractedly gave the memory to Grindelwald and then sat and watched him re-live it.

"Did you-" Frieda asked, before cutting herself off. The letters were in her pocket.

'_My beloved Albus_' swirled in her mind, burned against the inside of her eyelids.

"Did I?" Grindelwald asked, with a maniac sort of grin. He strolled over to the bars. "Did I what?"

"Step away from the bars," said Frieda, as calmly as she could, her wand aimed at Grindelwald's heart. "Step away from the bars or I will curse you."

"It wouldn't do any good. I know you're dying to ask. Ask."

"Did you- why did you do it?"

Grindelwald grinned again, an expression somewhere between a grief so intense it broke the mind and a wild ecstasy as equally hard to understand. "Ah, you still don't know? I won't tell you then. You'll have to wait and find out. You're not a _quick _girl, but you're smart enough. You'll figure it out."

"Dumbledore… gave you letters," Frieda said, with some difficulty. She pulled them out.

Grindelwald just watched her.

"He called you Dorian Gray."

"He did do that, at times." Grindelwald leaned back on his bed. His smile was oddly sweet. "May I have my letters?"

"How could he love you?" Frieda demanded.

"Easily enough," Grindelwald replied. "Very easily. It is always easy to love someone who understands you. Letters, Frieda?"

She tossed them in and they landed on the bed.

Grindelwald favored her with a beatific smile. "You are so very kind, Frieda. I trust you read them? You should understand then."

"I don't," she said harshly, the bitterness rising up to almost choke her (the lock of white hair, the pain of the acid she threw on her own face, the endless rows of tattooed numbers on corpses). "How could-" No, she thought suddenly, viciously. Don't ask. Don't ask him about Dumbledore, don't ask him how a hero could love such a villain. "No, I will never understand you. No one will ever understand you again."

"You will," Grindelwald said placidly.

Frieda did, eventually.

Conrad was late that day. Even Grindelwald noticed, as he petted his cat and pretended to read the latest issue of the British newspaper, _The Daily Prophet_.

"He's not coming," Grindelwald informed her placidly, shaking back his now snow-white curls. "Not at all."

"Do not talk to me," Frieda informed him, trying to be calm, cool, collected- everything she did not feel, could not feel with the '_my beloved Albus'_ circling through her thoughts.

"He's not coming. _Voldemort _found him." Grindelwald took a particular relish in saying the name and Frieda shivered.

"I said, _don't talk to me._"

"Alright. But, if I were you, I'd hide in the toilets very soon."

She did not ask, though she desperately wanted to know.

"Voldemort is going to find me. He's not stupid. He'll want the Hallows. Here. Take Wulfric. He oughtn't to die." He passed the cat through the bars and Frieda took him cautiously.

There was a sudden crash and a chorus of shouts from outside.

Frieda felt a thrill of terror and looked up to see Grindelwald grinning, his blue-green eyes locked on her face.

"Now," Grindelwald said, "is when you hide. Keep Wulfric quiet and take very good care of him. He was a present from someone I love very deeply."

"Just what do you think is going to happen?" Frieda demanded sharply.

"I'm going to die!" Grindelwald exclaimed, in the tones of a child informing the world at large that he was going on a pony ride. "Voldemort is going to come and ask about the Elder Wand. You don't know what it is and you don't need to know. Voldemort is a very predictable villain like that." Grindelwald's grin grew. "He doesn't _understand_. He never will. Now go quickly. If you live the door open slightly, you might be able to hear. Voldemort will be too angry to inspect everything. He's very _careless_. He'll never be as successful as I was."

Another explosion.

It was suddenly very difficult to think. She hugged the cat.

"If you won't do it for yourself, do it for poor Wulfric. Also, don't be a hero. Let that Potter puppet of Dumbledore's do it. Go tell someone once Voldemort's gone. Oh and feed Wulfic. He likes to chase ice mice and he has to be brushed in the mornings or he sheds everywhere."

"And abandon you to Lord Voldemort?" Frieda frowned. "You are an evil bastard, but I'd rather see you alive and suffering than dead. And how do I know you won't-"

"It's not like I'd join him," Grindelwald replied, sounding rather insulted. "And what can he do to me that hasn't been done already? I was tortured for years before you had your change of heart, girl, and I laughed it off. I don't see how this will be any different."

Frieda hesitated, then dove into the bathroom, just by the door out of Grindelwald's cell. Wulfric was still fast asleep. Frieda hid him on top of the tank of the toilet and locked the stall door. She really didn't want Wulfric running out into what would apparently be a showdown between the two most powerful wizards still living. Frieda Disillusioned herself and, propping the door to the bathroom open slightly, peered out to watch. Grindelwald sat down on his bed.

He looked around and then pulled a stack of letters, tied with silver ribbon, out from under his mattress. He read them with every appearance of enjoyment before taking three out and quietly burning all the rest. Grindelwald meticulously Spellotaped the remaining letters together and read through them.

After a moment, he paused, lifted his lined, wrinkled face to hear better and then turned to grin widely at the window.

"You fritter away too much time by killing people," Grindelwald announced to the shadows. "It's very _wasteful_ and completely unnecessary. You oughtn't to kill anyone unless you absolutely needed to."

"And _you_ waste my time, old man."

Frieda shivered. That voice was _evil_. There was no other way to describe it. And it- it came from a shadow in the barred… previously barred window. But then the shadow unfolded itself-

Frieda saw a pale face and a pair of glowing red eyes before the figure turned to face Grindelwald.

"Excuse me, just _who _established a highly successful pan-European fascist regime with an army of Inferi and just _who_ got defeated by an infant?" Grindelwald smiled. "Go on, guess, _milord_. What a poncy name! Why not stick with your own?"

_Voldemort_. It was _Voldemort_. Frieda clutched at her wand and willed herself into stillness.

"You will also note that I maintained my good looks while you look like a snake. What did you do with your _nose_?" Grindelwald sounded almost plaintive. "People _ought _to have noses. It was just strange when you got rid of yours. Albus, at least, broke his nose. It never quite healed."

"_Shut up_," snarled Voldemort.

"No," said Grindelwald. "I am over a hundred and ten years old. I conquered all of Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and a good chunk of Asia and the South Pacific. You only have England. Do you still think you're the better evil overlord?" Grindelwald apparently had a death wish and burst out laughing. "I can give you a good piece of advice."

"About-"

"About world domination!"

"You can tell me where the Elder Wand is?"

"I can tell you never to invade Russia! It's always winter there! It doesn't work."

Voldemort lunged forward, seizing Grindlewald by the front of his robes. "What about the _Elder Wand!?_"

Frieda could see Grindelwald's grin over Voldemort's shoulder.

"I never had it."

Grindelwald still laughed in the face of Voldemort's scream of rage.

"Tell me, or I will kill you!"

"Kill me then, Voldemort, I welcome death! But my death will not bring you what you seek… There is so much you do not understand." He was giggling now. "No, you will never understand and that's why you're going to fail." He dragged out the 'fail' in a horribly sing-song sort of voice.

"Just what don't I understand?" hissed Voldemort, flinging him back on the bed with enough force to break every bone in Grindelwald's skeletal old body.

"You don't understand why I fell."

"You have ten seconds."

"I surrendered. You wouldn't understand why if I told you. And that's why you're going to _die_. And it's going to be very _painful_ for you." Grindelwald broke out into peals of laughter that echoed like ringing bells off of the stone walls.

"You grow tiresome."

"You threaten too much without actually saying anything." Grindelwald popped out his dentures and used them as a hand puppet.

It was, quite possibly, the strangest thing Frieda had ever seen.

"Look!" Grindelwald demanded gleefully. "This is you! Watch your mistakes." In a very bad imitation of Voldemort's snake-like voice and British-accent, Grindelwald clacked his dentures together and hissed, "I am Lord Voldemort and I gave myself a meaningless title because I'm compensating for my deep-seated insecurities. I hate Muggles and I hate _you_, so I'm just going to kill at random to breed resentment among my underlings instead of filling them with the righteous fear of loyal lieutenants. Who needs the loyalty of good, intelligent minions who understand that you are much more powerful than they could dream of being and that you also will not kill them unless it is absolutely imperative to do so, and who actually know what a filing system is, and I will talk and talk and talk and- bam!" Grindelwald punched his own hand, sending his dentures flying. "You see how you get beaten by infants, now?"

"Shut up!" Voldemort raised his wand, his black robes billowing back to reveal a pale, thin forearm. "Tell me where the Elder Wand is, or I will kill you!"

"Kill me then. You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours-"

Voldemort growled in frustration and there was a flash of blinding green light. When Frieda blinked away the spots swimming across her vision, Voldemort was gone. Grindelwald fell across his bed, his toothless gums parted in a smile.

Frieda crept out of the bathroom, wand up. Voldermort was completely gone. She made the cell bars part with an impatient wand wave, and looked around. It was utterly trashed. The most powerful and successful Dark Lord of the century laid sprawled on his bed, dentureless. Frieda thought she perhaps ought to straighten out his robes, but then she saw the letter clutched tightly in his hand.

Frieda crept up and pried the parchment out of Grindelwald's fingers.

_Gellert-_

_Voldermort has not only turned the Resurrection Stone into a Horcrux (ironically enough), he has also taken Slytherin's pendant, Ravenclaw's diadem, and Hufflepuff's cup. I doubt that I will be able to find them all. It will be up to Harry._

_I appreciate any insights you may have on Voldemort at the moment, besides the speculations of your last letter on the symbolic significance of Tom's missing nose. _

_I am very short on time. Please write quickly and coherently._

_Albus_

_My beloved Albus,_

_You cannot blame me for rambling when I write. You so rarely write to me that I must exercise my pen as much as I can when I am guaranteed an audience. You did not ask about the health of my cat. I realize that defeating Voldemort can cause enough stress to create memory gaps, so I shall forgive you this once. Wulfric is alive and well. He has recently learned how to fetch. I throw crumpled indictments against me across the cell and Wulfric very kindly brings them back. He enjoys the ice mice, by the by, almost as much as I do._

_To address your question: There is no doubt of Voldemort's defeat. He does not plan well. He kills unnecessarily and thoughtlessly. His regime is very messy in that respect; he allows his followers to kill without reason and without order. It is infuriating to think of the waste of potential talent. I confess that I myself find little enough in common with him, but there is this- Voldemort holds himself to be more than human. He wishes to be immortal and so holds himself over all mortal notions and values- and, as you speculated, love in particular._

_He will never understand that all true power stems from love. I never would have ended up in this cell with only Wulfric for company if I hadn't loved you and surrendered. It will defeat him- and, from what little you have told me about your boy Snape, and all that I have guessed, it will. He did not know what extremes he pushed Snape to when Snape joined you and he will not understand what Snape may do. You will have to rely on him. Doubtless, Voldemort's random killings will cause more people to rise up. No one can remain at peace when someone they love has died, or is as good as dead. _

_Voldemort is also a terrible copy cat. He will attempt everything I did, but, because his ideological principles are not the same and because he does so insist on killing everyone, he will not do it as successfully. I don't understand his hatred for Muggle-borns. Clearly the manifestation of magic in an individual raises them above the masses of the ordinary, immaterial of birth. The focus on birth and background itself is vastly irritating. He is focusing on the wrong details entirely. I suppose he has the liberty to do so; if what you say is true, he has split his soul so horrifically that he has moved somewhat beyond basic mortality and morality. I would find it admirable, if the _waste _of his regime and his ideas did not so disgust me. He is an exceptional man, no doubt, but love will be his downfall as much as it was mine. Even more so, because he has never felt it and will never experience it. _

_That is a very bad plan. I realize you raised this boy to be a sacrifice, but let him stay a sacrifice. He is appallingly stupid. I know you said not to believe the papers, but to allow such garbage to go published and unchecked? From what you have told me, his instincts are good, but he has no brain at all. If you _must _have him search for the Hallows you would do better to let that intelligent, cautious girl you told me about have control of the clues. It will end very badly if you do not._

_I found where you hid our old letters in the book you sent me. That was a lovely summer wasn't it? I was sixteen, you were eighteen, and we hadn't yet learned that some things were impossible._

_I love you as much now as I did then._

_-Gellert_

_Gellert-_

_Thank you, my friend. I must leave, now so I haven't much time to write._

_I have a feeling of foreboding, so I will, at least, put this to paper- you have been the one great joy and the one great tragedy of my life. _

_I love you._

_Albus_

Wulfric had woken up as she was reading, and padded over to Frieda.

She knelt down to scratch his head. Well, hell. Stranger things had happened than- than Gellert Grindelwald being human. Such as Gellert Grindelwald, oddly enough, trying to be a hero.

Frieda had never been a good hand at Divination, but she had a sudden, powerful flash of something that was not a dream and wasn't memory-

_The fog swirled around the train station, where an old man sat on a bench, polishing his glasses. A train whistle pierced the silence, just as a figure emerged from the fog. It was Grindelwald, stooped and dentureless, his white curls blending in with the mist. Frieda looked back at the old man on the bench and he had suddenly become young again- his hair a bright auburn, flowing over his shoulders, his cheeks smooth, his bright blue eyes sparkling behind glasses he pushed up an unbroken nose. Frieda looked back and Grindelwald was suddenly the young man she'd seen in pictures and posters and propaganda when she had been very young. He practically glowed, his blond curls framing a bright, merry face, his figure straight and lithe and well-formed._

"_You're late," said the other man, folding his arms over his old-fashioned modified Muggle clothes, and a midnight blue robe._

"_Voldemort monologues incessantly," replied Grindelwald, with a grin that made him suddenly and indescribably handsome. "That and I had… a great deal to atone for." There was a pause and the two of them smiled like the awkward teenagers they appeared to be. _

"_You avoided me," Grindelwald said, in an abrupt non-sequitor._

"_Can you blame me?"_

_Grindelwald shook his head. "Not at all, Albus."_

_Dumbledore smiled ruefully. "Thank you. I was slightly afraid of that, and… all that happened to you-"_

"_We all have our crosses to bear," Grindelwald said, with a wolfish sort of grin. "Mine were considerably heavier than yours, I think, but, then again, we both suffered for taking on responsibility. Mine was just more visible. It's nice to have my teeth back. How _dreadful_ it was to be old." A pause. "I know you said that we couldn't go back to the past, but…." He paused, puzzled, frowning. "Perhaps we could still… try to start again."_

_Dumbledore smiled and Frieda realized that Dumbledore had been rather handsome as a young man. "I have always believed in second chances, Gellert."_

_They intertwined their hands together, one, inseparable circle, and disappeared into the fog._

To think, Gellert Grindelwald had a point after all. Villians were never as bad as they were made out to be and heroes-

Her mind balked at the implication.

The world still needed horoes, needed people without the failings of humanity to show them they would be alright- didn't they?

Did people- did anyone really need the truth?

Did anyone need to know Dumbledore won because Grindelwald loved him too much to kill him? Did anyone need to know that, at the last, Grindelwald tried to save the world? Perhaps the last; everyone needed a good story of redemption after all. No one needed to hear about a fallen hero.

Frieda looked at the letter. It was too hard, sometimes, to see that everyone was human after all.

She crumpled the letter into a ball and let it drop to the floor. It was, perhaps, a bad decision, but it was one that had been made many times before, and would be made many times afterwards. Humanity had to be saved from itself at times- and, Frieda thought, it was up to anyone aware of it to decide how and why and when it was to be saved. For a moment, she thought of the dogmatic lessons of the Grindelwald Youth, the professor's oddly taught expression as she told Frieda nothing bad happened to her parents, that the reeducation camps were just like a free vacation, really. Frieda looked around the cell.

There was nothing salvageable here; she would give orders to burn everything later.

"Come, Wuldric," Frieda said, before forcing herself onward. She steeled herself for the awful, awful carnage she would see. All this was somehow worse than the Reeducation Camps, than the Grindelwald Youth- and even if Grindelwald turned out to be… well, human, after all, it was still horrible to realize all these people, all her subordinates had died for him.

Wulfric caught the crumpled parchment before it tumbled out of the window. He seized on it, tail lashing behind him with pride, and jumped up into Grindwald's lap.

The rising sun softened Grindelwald's smile and, when Wulfric batted the paper into his curled hand, Gellert's smile seemed to outshine the dawn.


End file.
